"I was a horse fanatic," she recalled recently. "My dad thought if he ignored me it would just kind of go away."

It took two years of begging, but Dad ponied up with a horse for a 9-year-old Brittany.

Fifteen years later, the fanaticism hasn't gone anywhere. With dusty determination mixed with the rhinestone sparkle of her self-designed saddles, tack and bridles, Pozzi-Pharr fended off diversions such as gymnastics and college to land at the top level of professional rodeo barrel racing.

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As the 2007 world champion barrel racer, Pozzi-Pharr has become one of the competitors to beat during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which begins Monday and runs through March 22 at Reliant Park. She was the rookie to watch when she turned professional in 2003 and has qualified four times for the sport's championship event, the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

"Those are wonderful credentials to build your confidence, keeping your goals in perspective," said Sharon Camarillo, a former champion barrel racer and announcer at the Houston rodeo. "She has laid the plan to be a good competitor for many years. She is young. She is strong. She is courageous."

There's even a "Brittany Pozzi-Pharr Fan Video" on YouTube.

The plan that Pozzi-Pharr laid for her life was sparked by a love of horses, first satisfied by a My Little Pony and The Black Stallion. Her first riding experiences were on a friend's ranch. Once enticed, the begging for her own horse started.

At first, her father, Randy Pozzi, was unmoved. Pozzi had just bought his father out in an oilfield business, and he was well aware that horses were an expensive and time-consuming hobby.

Pozzi had also done some calf-roping in his youth and was familiar with what even a little bit of rodeo could do to a person.

"I knew how it was when you get it in your blood," he said. "I just wanted to wait."

His daughter didn't. Or not for long.

"She just kept on and on and finally we bought her a horse," Pozzi said.

The family didn't buy a horse trailer for their new horse. So father and daughter together rode the horse about five miles down the road from then their home in Nursery to a local rodeo for children.

On the way home, ribbons of victory in hand, Pozzi had a glimpse into what was ahead.

"She was lit up like a Christmas tree that whole five miles back wanting to know where the next one was," Pozzi said.

"I knew that it was going to be getting involved pretty quick," he added.

Soon came along the horse trailer, and it was off to the barrel races.

"He got into it big time," Pozzi-Pharr said of her father. "He was just as addicted as I am."

In her preteen years, Pozzi-Pharr also participated in gymnastics. But soon gymnastics nudged in on her horse-riding time. So gymnastics was cut and the amount of time spent on a horse grew.

The whole family became involved as Pozzi and his wife, Denise, spent weekends at barrel races. Pozzi's younger daughter, Brooke, also started barrel racing.

Summers were consumed with rodeos during Pozzi-Pharr's junior high years. Once in high school, there were state and national competitions.

"I didn't hang out with anybody at school," Pozzi-Pharr said. "I hung out with rodeo people."

The prom was the only high school dance she attended.

After high school, she headed off for two semesters at Texas A&M University because it seemed the thing to do, she said. But with a good horse, Leroy, what she wanted to do was hit the road with a trailer.

"She came to us and said that this horse that she had, she thought she could go pro on it," Pozzi said. "I was a little bit leery about it because I thought she could, too. But I didn't want her to know that. I thought she'd be successful, but I also wanted to get her an education."

As her father tells it, the idea was that Pozzi-Pharr would head out on a trial basis.

But his daughter considered the parental green light "all she wrote," she said. So the summer after her freshman year, Pozzi-Pharr started on a professional path and hit the road.

"I loved it," she said. "I didn't get homesick. I'm not a homebody."

Determination has helped put Pozzi-Pharr at the top of her barrel-racing game, said Randy Pozzi.

"She was very, very, very strong-willed from the day she hit the ground 'til today," he said. "She's a 95-pound ball of determination and always on the go."

Her husband, tie-down roper Doug Pharr, also credits her ability to focus on the task, running barrels on a horse, and avoid the distractions of competition.

"She is so mentally prepared," Pharr said. "She has the ability to block out the adversity."

Camarillo witnessed that quality at the 2007 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Pozzi-Pharr fended off tough competition and crowd pleasing rides from a challenger to clinch the championship title, said Camarillo, who teaches horsemanship and is the author of Barrel Racing (Western Horseman, $14.95).

"A competitor and their horse can thrive on that or it can really start wracking your nerves," Camarillo said. "She made every run count. ... She did an exceptional job mentally and physically."

Rodeo was integrated in her romantic life when Brittany Pozzi met Doug Pharr. The two had met at a rodeo, and later started dating. They married in December 2006.

They scheduled the wedding around their rodeo schedule. They returned from the National Finals Rodeo, wed, went on a honeymoon, and then headed out to the next rodeo. Pozzi-Pharr's mother did most of the wedding planning, Randy Pozzi said.

More than a year later, their home in the countryside of Victoria has a distinctive "I don't spend a lot of time here," style. It has Western-like design elements highlighted by saddles won at rodeos and cases of belt buckles.

"We aren't home long enough to really do anything," Pozzi-Pharr said of her decorating scheme.

One of the trailers the couple haul on the road has more of a lived-in look. Cowboy hats hang from above the door and boots are stacked to the side. Attached to the living quarters is the horse quarters, which most often is the home on the road for Pozzi-Pharr's main horse, Stitch.

If her home is not decorated, her saddles and bridles are. Pozzi-Pharr designs gear with sparkling rhinestones and her signature five-leaf posey, a play on her last name. She and Pharr also raise, train and sell horses from their home, an endeavor that spills over to her parents' home and barn, which is a short distance down the road.

That means that her father, once reluctant to buy a horse, lives surrounded by them.

Though he no longer spends every weekend at the rodeo, he and Denise Pozzi attend the major events and camp out for the National Finals Rodeo which is held annually in Las Vegas.

They plan to be in the audience at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. And Pozzi will do what he always does: Carefully scrutinize his daughter's performance just in case she asks for his opinion.

"I don't offer any information unless I'm asked," he said. "From time to time she asks for Dad's input."